I have been trying to understand how it works now after the changes, but my understanding is conflicting with another player's explanation, and I'm not convinced he's right and I'm wrong yet.

The AC decrease stacks up to a lower maximum now, right? Assuming an ideal world where EW always hits and works as the attacker wants it to.

Since now it triggers only once every two rounds but the AC penalty lasts the same five rounds, you are stacking only 2.5 drain triggers instead of the old 5, which adds up to a lesser amount. Or am I interpreting this wrongly?

And before someone thinks this is some disingenuous attempt to start a thread arguing for a return to the ways of old, as it were, let me say that I don't care what you do to the feat (well, I do, to an extent, but not enough to argue one way or the other - you know what I mean, right?). I just want to properly understand the effects these attacks now have.

Thanks in advance!

You are fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.

Also Cosmic, you have to be careful switching weapons, as that can cause the feat to occasionally deactivate. If you are in stealth and wish to activate, or deactivate (I don’t know why) it will break your stealth and expose you. If you use spells like Tensers, it will deactivate and not be able to activated again until the spell is over. Vale offered me the information that Blinding Strike and using Poisons is not compatible, or able to be used until the feat is deactivated.

Please use this for your information, if you were unaware. Vale has come up with a great possible solution for the EW auto hit bug, but it is important to know the kinks with the new feat as well.

Laisren Ua Tiernan:
The heart must die, so thy loving progeny may live.

The breaking stealth thing is for any custom feat and it's why it took us so long to implement a fix at all. Previous attempts were still activated abilities, which broke stealth meaning you couldn't use it at all until after your sneak attacks fired. Buy making it a mode you can activate it and have it active while still attacking with it out of stealth.

The other issues are also valid, just explaining the "why" with regard to breaking stealth.

cosmic ray wrote:So, according to chad, switching EW on and off while in stealth will no longer break stealth, but the other incompatibilities are still present, correct?

No, switching EW on/off will break stealth. Any custom feat will always break stealth, there is no possible way around that. However, switching EW on and leaving it on will allow you to attack out of stealth while using Expose Weakness. You just have to keep an eye and if you stop seeing it trigger, reactivate it while not in stealth. The nice thing is when you click it, it tells you if it's toggled on or off, so when in a spot where you can be relatively safe for a few seconds it's not a bad idea to click it...If it says EW is deactivated then just wait for the 6s cooldown and click again. Best (only) way I have found to keep it on fairly consistently. Generally every time I activate Blinding Strike, I then click EW to ensure it's active.

That has given me an idea, however. Would it be possible to remove the cooldown timer on the EW feat so that it's a little less annoying to check whether it is active or inactive from now on? The cooldown was there to keep you from spamming the ability on your targets, but now that limitation seems to be obsolete.

You are fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.

That has given me an idea, however. Would it be possible to remove the cooldown timer on the EW feat so that it's a little less annoying to check whether it is active or inactive from now on? The cooldown was there to keep you from spamming the ability on your targets, but now that limitation seems to be obsolete.

The cooldown is to avoid a bug/exploit where you could apply multiple instances of Expose Weakness on your weapon. Causing it to fire additional times per hit. Thus making astronomical bleed damage and AC malus. Unfortunately the cooldown is necessary.